Reach
by BlackNymph
Summary: Sequel to Hunt. All journies start with the first step, but the subsequent steps are the hardest. He's got his dream team, now what about the rest? Founders fic. Eventual hints of Godric/Rowena, Salazar/Helga.
1. Chapter 1

Began as spiritual successor, but is now more or less sequel to Hunt. Thinking maybe this fic will be two of three? We shall see. 

* * *

><p>"Think of it, Salazar. Think of what we could do. The future we could create."<p>

"How very storybook."

"I'm serious."

"And I."

Salazar had indeed fetched his lyre, and it sat in his lap while he pulled at the strings, an absent-minded punctuation to his sentences. Every so often, when Godric said something particularly bombastically well-intentioned, he would strike up a jaunty accompaniment with a wry smirk on his face.

Long fingers strummed a chord, and he scowled, fiddling a bit with the tuning. "It's quite a good idea in theory, as most ideas are. I'm sure with effort and, more importantly, skill, it can be accomplished. It's just..." He paused, plucked at a high note. "Blindingly optimistic."

"I feel I can do it, if I have you by my side." Godric hated that lyre. He knew his best friend as well as anyone could, but whenever that damnable instrument entered the conversation, he was never sure how thick the ice was beneath his feet – every note felt like agitation.

Salazar bared a wolfish grin. "It would certainly help," he agreed. "Though you know you don't have to flatter me. All it took was walking through the door."

And so it was. Unfailingly, he had been at his friend's back in what he felt was just barely shy of a hare-brained scheme, pushing and supporting and taking the reigns, when necessary. Rowena Ravenclaw had been his idea, as Godric took no end of pleasure in reminding him every time he mentioned giving up finding her.

That had been a long road leading up to an even longer one, and well worth it – as soon as either man set eye on her, they felt charged by the sheer aura of intellect she fairly radiated. Where before they had merely wanted her, now they _needed_ her.

Godric was visibly taken with her from the start. He had launched into his spiel with trepidation when he had learned how recently she had been widowed, but as soon as she began to press him with questions – sharp, insightful questions to which he admittedly had no answer, nor had even thought of – his ruddy face became even redder with excitement.

She was immediately a part of the team, unabashedly treating them as though they had all known each other since childhood: insight took the place of experience as she made comments and jokes that should have come off as snide or ribald, but merely felt as comfortable as when she placed a hand over one of theirs, or rested her head on a nearby shoulder. It was quite without shame when she offhandedly mentioned that she had put a _very_ particular combination of herbs in their tea that first week, though never once did she apologize, nor tell them what it was.

She had insisted that they may use her home as their own until everything was said and done. Though he never made mention of such, Salazar believed it was because she was unused to being so alone.

And yet there was still an emptiness, a void in the house, felt by all. Rowena pointed out that they three could not possibly think to do this without even further help, and was quick to supply a solution in the form of her own bosom companion. Feeling quite apart of the planning and brainstorming that the other two excitedly launched into whenever their eyes met, Salazar volunteered to appeal to her himself.

Helga Hufflepuff, too, had been an easy acquisition, though with hindsight, Salazar resented the gleam in Rowena's eye when she told him where her friend could be found. A meaningful look does not a warning make. Nonetheless, he negotiated with Helga, and she with him, until finally they came to the conclusion that they were really only negotiating nothing. The night spent in her manse had not been his most restful, in recent memory.

She had been a sly one, she had. Her reputation was all saccharine, and Salazar could easily see where it had come from: everything about her was like honey. And like honey, she had a way of masking all of her other qualities with that almost overbearing sweetness. He made sure to keep his eye on her, not without an undercurrent of admiration.

Their journey back to Scotland was infuriatingly long. He maintained all throughout that it was unnecessary to stop quite so often; no, they did not _need_ to find an inn to stay at, there is perfectly good kindling everywhere; just how many maidservants does it take to get a woman atop a horse? She had retorted that if he like, he may certainly leave her behind, as she knew the way on her own quite well. They had several arguments over the matter, but Helga had scarcely even raised her voice, leaving the man feeling quite the fool for getting so angry. In the end, the silent agreement was to simply ride through the night.

By the time they returned to the Ravenclaw lands, Salazar dismounted and, ignoring everything else, made a beeline for his chambers and screamed into a cushion that was never seen again – he returned to stall and brush the horse feeling rather lighter, a smile on his lips and a hum in his throat.

The first day after the return was a calm one, without incident, as chambers were settled into and the travel-weary could finally get their much-deserved rest in _real_beds. Godric had checked in on his friend, and found him lying face first in the center of the bed, arms askew and legs dangling above the floor. Tenderly, he flicked his wand and righted the other man, the covers hovering softly into place – he closed the door behind him with a gentle _click_, a ghost of a smile on his face.

And then they had met for supper.

There are no words for the air in the room that night.

Godric's excitement was palpable, and his leg fairly shook the table with his fidgeting; and Rowena hardly even touched the food on her plate, ignoring it in favor of the stack of scrolls at her elbow, from which she read and would occasionally scribble the odd note. When they brought the other two up to speed, they took it in turns to dominate the conversation, and indeed often found their words overlapping, finishing the other's sentences with an unidentifiable glimmer in their eyes.

Helga had curtseyed prettily before the ruddy man, and held her hand for him to kiss – Salazar felt a twinge of smug satisfaction when Rowena had stopped that with a sharp, "Helga," and that same laugh she used with her daughter. The blonde grinned, and settled for a genial bow before probing Rowena with many of the same questions the other woman had asked.

As for Salazar, he felt slightly breathless. He knew himself, and regarded his abilities realistically: there were things he was good at, just as there were things he was not. He knew Godric, and his abilities just the same: for everything he himself was not keen on, his best friend tackled with mighty aplomb. For only having met Lady Ravenclaw a mere month ago, he felt his assessment of her was accurate as well: where he and Godric would approach a matter with a perhaps dash of aggression, she could cut it down with cool ruthlessness. And Helga...as little as he knew of her, he was impressed, and that was enough for him.

All these in consideration, he found himself smiling.

Without even having to dignify petty assignations of duty, their roles easily fell into place. All it took was one or another opening their mouths, a bit of discussion, and each had their weight to bear, and happily.

This could actually work. With time – for they had resources aplenty, between the four of them – the school could be the best thing the world had ever seen.

Would ever see.


	2. Chapter 2

So, fun fact: Gryffindor and Ravenclaw common rooms are towers closest to each other, and Hufflepuff and Slytherin are underground. 'Bom chicka wow-wow', I believe is the verbiage for the implications. ...Yes, that's what's going on in my head when I write this. If you weren't before, you are now warned.

* * *

><p>A mere six months. That was all it had taken, from conception to production. All four had worked tirelessly, day and night into day again. Salazar had taken to writing scores of letters to every magician he knew, great and small, and scoured old tomes he had never even heard of in the Ravenclaw library; Helga, unafraid as always to get her hands dirty, searched for days for the best sources of the best herbs and spices and roots and creatures; Godric insisted on taking the lion's share of work, and visited a massive list of people and places that only he truly knew the extent of. Even Helena begged to be included, with some task or another.<p>

And Rowena had built the castle. Not in stone quite as yet, but every so often when she would emerge from her chambers, there would be several fresh stacks of architectural scrolls upon her desk, ink still wet. It hadn't taken her long at all to find a prime site, nor had it taken long to convince the others – her judgement was trusted implicitly. Her suggestion to have no one set of floorplans was likewise met with hearty agreement, if not delight.

She didn't see much of the sun, in those six months – did not, in fact, see much beyond the corridor just outside her chambers.

Her daughter visited, pleaded for her mother to please come and sit with her, as she once had. It took some explaining (and afterward, she was still not quite sure she had done it satisfactorily for the nine-year-old girl, who remained dour to a fault), but what Helena did eventually understand was that her mother's eyes were alive again. Still, when her mother had left her seat to search for a particular book, she had smudged some of the staircases and drawn in new ones, mindless of where they now reconnected. There was only the slightest amount of spite in the gesture, and she couldn't look anyone in the eye, feeling horrid for months to come.

Helga had delivered her meals (most of which had lain, largely untouched, into the small hours of the morning) and attempted to coax her into a walkabout in the forest, to no avail. When that inevitably failed, she paced the room animatedly, recounting tales she remembered from her own tutors, the scholars-before-scholars of old. Once, with a heavy wistful nostalgia, she had brought up how quaint it would be to place the kitchens within easy reach, so that she may cook at all hours of the day, and then went back to speaking of her own education.

Salazar took to bringing her tea, having deciphered the exact recipe she had used when they first met not so very long ago (not without a subtle glance of reproach, which she could only hope meant that he had excluded the valerian, or at least the monkshood), and would occasionally sit with her for several hours and devise some of the more fantastical and labyrinthine hallways. He mentioned, once or twice or every time, the convenience of an unexplored forest on the grounds, and was adamant on the use of layers of cloaking spells he was in the middle of inventing himself. He stressed privacy more times than even she could keep track of.

Godric, remarkably, kept himself scarce while she worked. For every ten times she saw the others, she saw him once, and briefly. He seemed hesitant, even, to enter her chambers, though when he did he would assess her work with a strange combination of grave seriousness and awestruck elation. His feedback was hardest to discern – perhaps a tower here, instead of the hall? or what shall we do with so much empty space? – and listened patiently as she explained her reasoning, nodding though she knew he would simply bring it up again next time he called upon her. Finally, when she announced she was this close to being done, he paused at the doorway, smiled over his shoulder and briefly suggested that he would like to see the grounds for himself.

She scolded herself inwardly. The conceptual planning had quite gotten the better of her, and it hadn't even occurred to her that the others couldn't possibly see what she was seeing. How could they, so unfamiliar with the land as they were?

One morning, Rowena rose from a barely-there nap, and for the first time in two months, truly sat and _looked_ at the floorplans. Gently, she spread them across her floor, feet barely touching the ground as she tiptoed across them, envisioning everything as though she were there. With a soft smile, she gathered them into her arms and stepped out from her quarters.

"I think we should all go to see the site."

At her announcement, the activity in the kitchen bustled to a halt from the sheer shock of Rowena being up and moving, never mind that she was only in her dressing gown.

Helga, dusted head to toe with flour, her hair pulled back with a kerchief, glanced across the simmering pots and sizzling pans to Salazar, mid-reach within her herb cupboard, clearly in the middle of making her tea, and he in turn looked to Godric, seated at the small table, a mug of something steaming in his hand.

His expression was warm upon hers, and he rose to meet her, eyes flicking down to the parchment in her hands. A finger flipped through the top of the sheaf, and there was a pause, just a moment.

"I'm done," she explained, to none and to all. "We have our castle."

Green eyes burned into hers, and a great smile broke out onto his face. "Excellent. When do we leave?"

Salazar answered, steering Rowena to a seat at the table, where he promptly placed a mug identical to Godric's before her and rested a hand on the back of her chair. "This afternoon, of course." A snort. "Tomorrow, at latest. Nothing so pressing we cannot hold off until later this week," he added, nodding at Helga.

She inclined her head, wiping her hands on her apron as she removed it. "Priorities. We cannot teach anyone if we haven't a place in which to do so, can we?"

"Indeed no." Godric seated himself again, beaming at each of his friends in their turn, resting his gaze on Rowena as she brought the mug to her lips. She could see how much effort it took for him not to spread out the floorplans as she had, then and there. "So we are agreed? We leave this afternoon?"

"Tomorrow."

Salazar looked pained. "Helga."

Suppressing a small smile, she nodded at the table, where Rowena had slumped forward, snoring softly.

Without a word, Helga gently pried the empty mug from her friend's hands, handing the parchment to Salazar, who flipped through it eagerly while Godric carried the lady of the house back to bed, where she belonged.

The next morning, a light drizzle saturated the air, and Rowena felt pleased at their good fortune. With the horses packed and ready before dawn, and a kiss for a dead-on-her-feet Helena, she mounted and they were off. She found herself far too excited to participate in the chatter between the two men, or the song Helga initiated midmorning. Every so often, when the horse could pick his own path from memory, she would run a reassuring hand over the scrolls in her saddlebag; at these moments, she found Godric watching her, and a smile was shared between them.

She caught sight of their destination at noon, towering cliff peeking at her over the horizon, a welcome companion to the sound of waves breaking against stone. She stilled her horse just before breaking the line of trees, face flushed as she met her friends' eyes; all seemed to have the same jubilant, if disbelieving expression mirrored between them.

Silence descended on the four as they came to a halt, gazes unwavering even at the sound of gulls overhead.

A beat.

Two.

A cry whooped through the air, followed by the pounding of hooves, and it was only when she dismounted that Rowena realized the sounds had come from her; her fellows arrived in short order, giddy and out of breath as they swung from their saddles.

The air shivered and trembled about them, sunlight wavering off of empty stone and fresh moss.

"The stones already here," Rowena explained, dragging her wand behind her lazily, conjuring translucent light-structures as she walked, "are ruins of a fortress. They belonged to a Viking who called himself Hoggvi."

Godric bared that grin, placing a hand against an immense shimmering door. "_Hoggvarvirki,_" he drawled, turning over a crumbling mast with his boot. His eyes appraised the area while she spoke, and all but drank in the sight of her illusion.

"Indeed so."

She danced about the site, going on at length exactly what she planned for where and why, the castle of her dreams trailing behind her. They followed, listened, absolutely rapt at the sensory experience – though they had all seen the castle in print, it was far different with even these insubstantial walls surrounding them.

After nigh on an hour, they reached the epicenter. "And this," she swished her wand extravagantly, "is to be the Great Hall."

So bright was the light, then, so great the glimmering columns that they could almost see children darting about them, through aisles of tables into the fading halls whence the four had come. After a moment, the hall, too, faded, leaving behind a massive moss clearing, peppered with stones and rubble.

Rowena's cheeks colored, happy to see her hard work come to almost-fruition, and glanced askance at the others. "What do you think?"

Before anyone could answer, Godric stepped forward, thumbing the broach free of his cloak. With great deliberation, he removed it from his shoulders and swirled it onto hers; finger by finger, he removed his gloves and handed them to Helga; and with the utmost care, he removed his swordbelt, placed it reverently into Salazar's hands. Meeting no one's eyes, unnervingly silent, he made his way through the fallen columns, trailing his fingers over a boulder as he passed it.

At last, he paused before a great stone, at least in girth what he was in height, and placed a hand on it. Then quite suddenly, he lunged for it, heaving it into his arms with a mighty bellow – alarmed, the others stepped forward, but he staved them off with a "Back!"

He stood quite still where he was, stone in his arms, allowing himself to adjust to the weight. And then he took a step back to them. Then another, and another – one halting step after the other, carefully, deliberately, huffing and puffing all the way.

He reached them again, his face blazing with exertion, but with that same deliberation, he very slowly bent to set the stone at their feet.

Godric rose to his full height then, and glowed with an intense pride. He met Rowena's eye, gave her that grin, and she felt the same pride well deeply in her chest.

"First stone is set."


	3. Chapter 3

**Yeah, so this one's long. I took a break for research (which included watching all of the SkyOne series Hex and reading Ken Follet's Pillars of the Earth), and then suddenly NaNo was here (which I failed at, because obviously time constraints are not my thing). But this one ate at me. I like how it turned out.**

** What I also like? Helga and Salazar. How they're turning out for me. Yes.**

* * *

><p>After Godric himself had hand-set the first stone in what was to be the pillars to the entryway, they had all agreed that it was fitting for the remainder of the arch to be done in the same fashion. This was perhaps the most challenging and most time consuming of everything they had to do, but the ache in their bones as they laid to rest at the end of the night was without question the most satisfying thing they had ever felt.<p>

Godric, of course, attempted to shoulder the lion's share of the hard labor, quite to the exasperation of the other four. While the others still slept, he would heave himself from his seat by the fire and work himself to exhaustion until the sun rose. This came to an abrupt halt when Salazar awoke in the small hours of one morning and saw him at it – one hushed conversation with Rowena later, and Godric was snoring by the fire, steaming cup of fresh tea in hand.

Mildly frustrated that his best friend had excluded him so, Salazar then took it upon himself to pick up Godric's extra share. Though he was not quite the meaty man Godric was, he toiled admirably, rising earliest and bedding latest. He cheerfully refused any and all things offered to him by either lady, winking and reassuring them that he was in fact working smarter, not just harder.

Rowena felt perhaps even more possessive of the castle's erection than Godric, reasoning that while it was he who had conceived the idea, it was she who gave it life. While she and another worked in the same area, she would keep a critical eye on everything the other was doing over her shoulder, sharply correcting a stone out of place or sloppy mortar with an impatient wave of her hand. It was difficult to be resentful of her, even when she did this – all could see the fierce pride that shone from every completed wall, and it was impossible to deny she knew what she was doing.

Helga, although by and large had left the most comfortable lifestyle ("cushy", to hear Salazar tell it, his tone measured and mild), certainly had no qualms with getting down and dirty. She went to her bedroll most nights covered in dust and sweat, carrying her soreness like a badge of honor, feeling lighter than she had in many years – not least because, she was alarmed to find, that she had lost at least a stone somewhere in the new walls.

It didn't seem quite enough, though. She knew, she knew because she was there, the toil going in, but for the life of her she simply could not see the result. Yes, this area had been cleared of rubble within two days, the walls re-erected within another two, connecting foundations shorn from the earth in yet another two, but for all that, it had been a year and a half and the castle looked more like a skeleton than a dream.

She very prudently did not voice her thoughts as such to the others, but on some of the colder nights she hinted at her unrest to an ever-alert Salazar.

Of the others, Godric the warm and robust and hearty, her friend Rowena the regal and chill, it was Salazar who surprised her the most, simply by being as he was, his gaze steady and sure but constantly assessing, feeling out his surroundings rather than taking them in as a matter of course. It was he who listened, who weighed his words carefully to deliver an answer not just needed but appropriate (to whom it is unclear until much later, she remained startled to discover daily), and it was he who, on a whim, had taken it upon himself to share vigil with her while Rowena and Godric visited the nearby town for more supplies.

He was in the habit, she noticed ever-increasingly, of hoarding – be it a leg of pheasant from breakfast, or a burst of energy he would tap into near midday, or some miniscule bit of information he gathered and honed over time. If he thought he could use it – and of course he could – he would keep it, and bide.

The night air was dry, almost frosty, and Helga pulled her furs closer about her while she toured the building site one last time – the Great Hall, nearly finished, the corridors, a single, massive staircase that from most angles seemed to lead into the sky itself. She paced, one delicate footstep in front of the other, trailing her newly blunted, dirt-encrusted fingers over the stone thoughtfully.

Step by step by step, appearing by all accounts to be meandering aimlessly, Helga finally stopped in the center of three immense ditches: her house.

Once the hardest manual labor had been gotten out of the way, Rowena brought up mention of the personalized quarters within the castle. "_It's ink on paper in the plans,_" she had said, " _but now we're actually here, I'd like your input. Ink and paper can be altered._"

The two men had stamped about the site, testing the waters, and shifted their territories subtly. Rowena, of course, knew the area top to bottom and inside-out inside her own mind, and had taken this into account when drawing up the design, but nevertheless fine-tuned her rooms, taking into account her fellows' modifications.

Helga, though, had simply sat in the area she knew to be hers, sat and breathed in the air, allowing the mist the collect on her closed eyelids as the waves broke a mile below. She sat and imagined, felt the room building itself around her until the she was sure there was a fire at her back and a cushion beneath her legs.

Contented, she had told Rowena that there need be no amendment.

Salazar had started the fire while she was gone, stoking it absently as she made her way back to him; she could see he had left his cloak across his knees, and there was a small cloth holding what remained of his day's meals beside him. He had a bit of dried fish in his hand, halfway to his mouth when he caught her eye, held it out to her without speaking.

She waved a hand, gracious smile on her lips.

Gently, expression carefully blank, he leaned across to her and took her hand in his, upturned it, and pushed the fish into it. "You'll fall ill if you don't," he insisted, settling back on his log seat and producing a few strips of jerky from his pack. "I've seen the look of your face this last week – you're paler."

"We're all rather paler up here, aren't we? I'm quite all right."

"Eat."

She nibbled at the haddock in appeasement, focusing her gaze on the embers at her feet. There was silence but for the waves for several moments, and she flicked her eyes once more over the frame of the castle, returned them to the fire.

"Salazar?"

He glanced at her sharply, intense focus smoldering as always, and canted his head to show that he was listening.

Helga licked her lips, kept her eyes on the fire and her expression studiously casual. "What do you dream of, when you expect for all this to be over?"

A pause while he turned the question over in his mind, prodding at the fire once before he answered: "I want to make us better."

There was more than that – Helga allowed the conversation to lull, waited for him to elaborate.

"We can be so much more, I believe. We, all of us, have only reached half of our potential – cobbled together through connections or good fortune, but what if the best of us weren't meant to be the best of us?" He tore at the jerky in his hand with his teeth, chewed thoughtfully for a moment. "For example, what if Godric had been a simple serving boy, or a rat on the streets rather than his family's title? He would still have had all of that power, that skill, that mind, or the _potential_ for all three, but no way to refine it." He spat some gristle into the fire, and it crackled in punctuation. "Waste."

She glanced at him through her lashes, impressed. From Salazar she expected an answer akin, though more along the lines of that they four could be better, could be improved, could reach the sun – but to hear him speak of people he didn't know, indeed some who as yet did not exist, children...it was uncharacteristically optimistic, almost tender. But his tone carried a hint of that same fierce insistence she had come to expect of him.

A smile quirked the corners of her lips. "And you think we can comb out that potential. Polish it from rough."

He raised an eyebrow and grimaced lightly: '_Are you serious?_'

The smile widened as a small laugh spilled from her lips, but here she paused, keeping her eyes on the fire as she chose her next words.

"What if we can't do it, Salazar? No bearing on our ability – obviously – but..."

"What are you saying, Helga? Plainly." His interest was frank now, eyes keen with firelight. The hand holding the jerky rested forgotten in his lap.

Helga twisted in her seat to glance over her shoulder at the almost-castle, and furrowed her brow pointedly, gesturing with her chin. "Look at what we've accomplished, Salazar, and look at how long it took us to do it."

Humoring her, he leaned from her line of sight, eyes scanning the timber- and stone-work of the past year; his gaze showed fondness, but with every inch, his brow, too, creased. When he found her eyes again, he narrowed his eyes inquisitively.

"What if..." She paused, licked her lips once more.

"You don't think we'll finish with time to spare."

"I'm merely saying it's a possibility," she corrected. "We've done so much in this time, so much together, and it's beautiful. But it's – "

"Not really enough, is it?" Salazar smirked at her. "I'm not sure if you're aware, Helga, but that manse that you live in wasn't erected the night before you claimed your bed."

Ignoring his jibes became easier by the day; where before she would have rejoined immediately with something snide and honeyed and a flutter of her eyelashes, here she furrowed her brow and ploughed on. "What if we die, Salazar?"

His chewing ceased immediately, and beside him even the fire seemed to freeze.

"What?"

A quick, pleading glance in his direction, then Helga stood and took a half step toward the building site. "You're right, Salazar. It takes time. But we will not live forever." Even as his mouth was opening, she spun to face him. "I know we will be _remembered_ forever, for this, for everything else we've done, but we physically will not be around." Their gazes met, and the fire crackled between them. "I want to finish, Salazar."

There was silence, then, as mist in the air.

Salazar extended his arm in her direction, and she went to him, placed herself beside him on the log. Without further ado, he pulled her against his side, with her face by his chest and his chin atop her head, long fingers resting delicately in what had at one time been an ample curve.

When he spoke, an indeterminate amount of time later, it was...almost uncharacteristically soft. "We'll do. The four of us."

And when she blinked, Helga opened her eyes to find she was still sitting on the log, the fire smoldering to embers at her feet and her companions snoring heartily in their bedrolls. She cast one final, thoughtful glance at the castle, moonlight erecting the walls and pillars just as well as Rowena's enchantment, before she joined them.

By noon the next day, tempers were high, the veins in Salazar's neck taut as bowstrings. Bad enough Godric, in his haste, came into Rowena's work area at a particularly inopportune time – Rowena, much as with everything else, considered herself a top notch healer, and Salazar certainly was no slouch either, but for a clavicle as absolutely shattered as Godric had managed ("Couldn't have half-assed it just this once, could you?"), there was only so much that could be done until the body needed time by itself.

Bad enough.

Salazar raised an arm to shield his eyes from the sun, so high in the sky, and absently wiped the sweat from his face with his forearm. Good with numbers as he was, he couldn't count the number of times he'd scanned the hills in search of movement – where on Earth did Helga think she'd gone?

"Salazar."

Weary already, he didn't even look over his shoulder. "I want to finish this, Rowena. I want this room done."

She canted her head, dark hair spilling over her knees where she sat by the hearth. "You'll work yourself dead, and then we'll be out two strong backs, won't we?"

"I can still – "

Two voices called out a sharp "Hush," before Godric could even finish his sentence. He settled his back against the log, far from cowed, a smile on his face.

Smoothly, as though his friend hadn't spoken, and without breaking his concentration on the ceiling he was vaulting, Salazar responded flippantly with, "Helga and Godric are taking their days today, perhaps I'll take mine next month – or when we finish."

"Salazar."

He grit his teeth. "Rowena, I've told you –"

"Salazar." Godric, this time.

Without breaking his concentration, Salazar glanced at them: they were watching, interest keen, the hills to the west, their expressions mirroring shock and relief and, perhaps, the slightest bit of amusement. Following their line of sight, he saw horses approaching from the distance.

A mass of horses, followed by a mass of bodies, and at the forefront, a single rider in a butter-yellow cloak, streaming behind her like a flutter-by's wings.

Rowena caught the ceiling for him, but there was no accounting for his jaw.

Red in the face, flushed and glowing, Helga approached the camp and dismounted, rolling her gait to continue moving without breaking stride. With the utmost propriety, she flurried a little curtsey to Rowena and Godric, glanced at Salazar, stripped to the waist, and gestured primly to the horde.

"I've brought some help." Catching storm-grey eyes for a moment so fleeting as to have not happened, she smiled. "I thought four hundred would do."


	4. Chapter 4

The torchlight flickered warmly against the stones in the hall, though the light did not extend much farther than a few feet beyond the flame, darkness first swallowing it in deference to the starlight shining from the dazzling sky above.

That had been the ladies' idea. Something about the romanticism of being able to see the sky, to count the stars at supper and see the raindrops falling over their heads. One minute, they were seated and dining and it had come up, a brief aside in the conversation met with fae-like excitement, and the next day it was so.

Godric remembered hitting his head on a sconce, so quick was he to duck from the rain that never reached him. When Salazar's eyes flicked up to the clouds, he knew his friend had done the same thing himself.

It was done.

Two years, from start to finish. It was done. At the rate they were going, Godric hadn't expected to be quite so satisfied and quite so eager – they warred inside his chest, tumultuous and roiling.

Was this what it was like to see one's dreams to fruition?

Helga's reinforcements had been an astounding help – four hundred men! With four hundred men, they could have built the castle in stone from scratch by hand, but by their luck, some of the men even knew enough magic to genuinely expedite the process. Of course, not all of them were so gifted, but they were hard working, and certainly had their own know-how.

Salazar, after he had recovered from the shock, had been absolutely furious for reasons he would not even begin to explain until long months later, and even then only to Godric in between their cups.

"_These men have no right to be here_," he hissed, his whisper borderlining on exaggerated, and Godric then could see the green in his eyes as some of the younger men, well-muscled and oiled with sweat, passed by the hearth where the ladies sat, hearty laughter in their throats. "_Some of them don't even know what a school is! Let alone what we will teach!_"

Eventually he had come round, thanks in no small part to Godric's gentle reminders that they two could not do it alone, why should they four? Or that teaching was what a school was for, and some of these men had the keenest minds he had ever seen.

Feathers still thoroughly ruffled, Salazar bit his tongue over the last month, his glances going from sour to indifferent, if perhaps a mite scornful. He didn't speak to Helga, certainly, until the castle was nearing on completion, a few trifles here and there remaining. There had been a rumble beneath the earth, a thunder in the air, and by the next morning all appeared good as new – Godric knew his friend better than that, could see Salazar's stormy-grey eyes sliding to one side or the other, and knew that while the wound had been bandaged, the scar would forever remain.

Regardless, Helga's ingenuity and the strength of her men brought the castle up to remarkable speed. Even Rowena found a bit of difficulty in overseeing all of the progress at once, though she certainly put her best effort forward. He saw only glimpses of her, those last months. Of the hem of her cloak, rather, whipping around a corner as she made her way from one group to the next to the next, barking instructions and corrections every which way.

There was but one occasion he saw her at rest, such as it was, seated by the fire when even the master masons had retired for the night, mulling over the drawn plans and murmuring to herself as her quill traced over the pages. She took no notice of him, even as he seated himself next to her, and within moments he heard her mumbling begin to trail off and felt the soft pressure of a head on his arm. Gently, without looking, Godric unfastened his cloak one-handed and flicked it over her.

He woke in the morning with it fashioned securely on his shoulders, and didn't see hide nor hair of her for perhaps another week.

The day the castle itself was physically completed was met with little to no fanfare: after checking many calculations upon calculations, each assuming the other correct, the ceiling was carefully vaulted. As Godric lowered his wand and rubbed the sweat from his temple with his shoulder, the master mason turned to him with an odd look on his face and announced, his tone stilted and rather anti-climactic, that they were done. The man then paused, as though he wasn't quite sure if what he'd just said were true, and after an equally hesitant nod from Godric, turned on his heel and began to inform and congratulate the others.

Salazar near threw a fit. How had completion gotten so close without them noticing? Did the builders and masons simply not know, or were they hiding the fact from them? How could they not have taken the time to set up the cloaking spells? Oh, some of the non-mages could be slipping off this very night to tell everyone they knew what they had done, they should have started memory-wiping workers _weeks_ ago!

Neither Godric nor Rowena quite knew how to calm him down; his teeth gnashed in fury at the sight of everyone, and he took to sulking in his rooms (an irony that he missed entirely). It took Helga visiting each day for ten days, herself getting angrier and angrier at his obstinacy, before he emerged again and suggested to Rowena and Godric that they three should ride about the premises and cast his now-perfected cloaking charms. His tone, as though nothing at all had happened, took them so aback that they agreed with no hesitation to do so that very day, while Helga stayed behind to, as she put it, "_Make the house into a home._"

When they returned, deliciously sore and exhausted, to a full table of piping hot foods, it scarcely occurred to them that the workforce had been decimated, and it certainly went unnoticed that those that remained were magical folk. Only weeks later, when Godric and Rowena took three men on a trip to and from the Ravenclaw lands to transfer Rowena's personal library into the school's, did they listen to their party's recounting of the last year, and found it odd that the men seemed to think they had been recruited just last week strictly as teachers.

When confronted with the abnormality, Helga turned red (as opposed to her usual blithe, pretty pink) and commented "_How strange_", but would say no more.

It was danced around for several weeks, no one broaching the subject with anything resembling candor, but one night during supper at their lone, long table in the Great Hall, Godric stood and surveyed his friends in silence for a moment, goblet in hand.

Finally, he raised it. "_Whatever has happened,_" he had announced, voice bold and a fire behind his eyes that wasn't entirely reflection, "_it makes no matter to what we have accomplished. We have finished, friends! And that is what we remain – we are friends, and we have done this together. This chilliness and distrustfulness suits us ill. I beg,_" he continued in a tone that was nothing near begging, and with a pointed look at Rowena, contemplating the contents of her goblet with cool indifference, and at Salazar, who looked as though he had swallowed something still-living, "_let us put this petty feud behind us, and let us revel in this great achievement!_"

He had raised his goblet expectantly in toast, and it was several seconds before, without glancing up, Rowena raised hers as well – after her friend, it was a fraction of a second before Helga followed suit.

But Salazar had regarded them a moment, sour look still on his face, though he met no one's eyes, before rising himself. He snatched his goblet from the table into his long fingers, glanced at his wine for half a moment, and at last met his best friend's gaze. A smile broke out over his features, wolfish but a smile nonetheless, and he too raised his goblet, knocking it back in one swift motion before clapping Godric the shoulder.

There was tension thereafter, of course, but as far as Godric could see, it was only that of four people who had constantly been in each other's company without reprieve. There too was the camaraderie they hadn't had the opportunity to enjoy since Helga had brought her workers, that simple trust and understanding between the four, the anticipation of another's needs that came with being a friend.

More than once he saw Salazar and Rowena, the two whose personalities boasted the most rigidity, simply walking the halls together, and later Rowena would assure him it was nothing more malicious than a shared gripe about the frost.

There had been a cold snap over the last week which had Rowena and Salazar darting about the castle, double-checking architecture and enchantment, despite having been through the previous winter. Looking up at the sky now, though, Godric was hard pressed to believe anything had or could or would possibly be awry.

The rain was warm and cleansing, pattering against the infinitely high ceiling, dribbling across like shooting stars. He closed his eyes and took a breath.

The hand on his arm, soft and warm, brought him back to himself, and his eyes flashed open, his face took on its ruddiest, most bombastic expression, and he waved the Great Doors open with a flourish.

One foot in front of the other down the aisle of awed little eyes, mouths agape – he was sure he saw tears at the splendor of he and his comrades. They reached the dais and mounted proudly, standing before their great table like kings and queens.

Godric glanced to his left – Helga smiled prettily and inclined her head – and to his right – Salazar winked surreptitiously. A step forward, a hand raised for quiet; he cleared his throat quietly.

"Welcome," he boomed, echoes from the farthest walls causing candles at all corners to flicker. "Welcome, one and all, to the first term of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."


End file.
